Insanity Disguised
by NRATQH
Summary: But one night you heard the click of a gun as it was pointed at your brother and your heart disappears from your chest to be replaced instead by a frozen stone... The birth and process of Leo's perfectionism and it's conclusion.
There's this thing you'll notice about Leo and his training. He's not the smartest or the strongest. He's also not the most talented by far.

But he _is_ the calmest. Do you know where that comes from?

...

It's from knowing where you stand. It's from understanding that there are thresholds that you cannot reach so you don't over exert yourself in some form of self pity or anger or childishness. You hold back. You don't show how disappointed you are that you can't do what your strength denies you, or conclude with reasoning that escapes you or even perform flawlessly with talents that were never yours.

You don't show the tears hidden behind half lidded eyes downcast in anger so brittle, so fragile it seems to break your heart in half with it.

There would have been a time I'm sure that those feelings _did_ exist, coming from childish resentment and envy.

But your childhood specifically has always been destined to be shorter than your brothers. Living in the sewers as mutated giant turtles is never a life promised with ease and tranquility. Danger and death passes by your door one too many times and you wish you weren't an easily frightened child but you are and your memory refuses to forget and insists instead to keep you awake at night with the thought that somehow you could have done something but you didn't or you couldn't.

Like the day you come home carrying a barely conscious Mikey on your shell because you weren't strong enough to catch him when he fell from the pipes you were playing on.

Or the time Raphael almost drowned because you weren't smart enough to estimate the depth of the pool you'd dared him to jump into during one of your adventures.

Or even when Donnie wouldnt leave his room for days in terror from a salvaging trip gone wrong, Something that wouldn't have happened if you had been able to balance them as perfectly as you had been taught to on the wire you were using to hide yourselves from the humans scavenging in the trash pile bellow. Instead donnie almost had his limbs torn of by the rabid guard dog on the leash all the while hearing the man who had seen him scream of demons and devils and monsters.

But one night you heard the click of a gun as it was pointed at your brother and your heart disappears from your chest to be replaced instead by a frozen stone your siblings always jokingly said was there instead. You come out of the experience alive and well and your brothers no worse for wear. But that stone in your chest never did thaw.

That's when you started training nights to compensate for what you couldn't do with perfection

That's when you did so many push ups your arms bruised at their joints to build the muscles you knew you needed to have.

That's when you began locking yourself in your room to read and how tsun zu's art of war became your favorite book.

That's how your obsession with perfection was born.

All the while splinter could only look upon these change of events with worry. Assuring himself that you were only going through a phase to help yourself cope with the predicament of your family. But it became a nonexistent thought when one morning he found you passed out from exhaustion in the dojo with purple blue elbows and breathing so heavy you feared it might stop and take you away from him before your time.

So he takes you aside and begins to conduct extra lessons for you to ensure you would not do so by yourself. But still he worries, because you come to the dojo with a scowl and he see's something in you shrink back with regret and loathing everytime you make a mistake even if it goes unreprimanded.

But the scowl never leaves the dojo. Outside of it you are Donatello's confidant and Raphael's sparring mate and Michelangelo's pranking buddy. Splinters looks at these moments of comradeship and love between you and your brothers with joy and he wished for nothing more than that it would stay that way.

But life is nothing if not changes. Soon you don't need those extra lessons anymore. Raphael becomes angry at your budding criticism of his technique and desire to break what little rules splinter has. Mikey begins to hide from your lectures and invitations of lessons to improve his katas. Donatello becomes more quite when you stop listening to his techno bable and berate him for leaving the lair so often to look for spare parts.

You're ten years old when you realize you hate yourself for what you have become and what you've done to your brothers.

You don't know if Splinter sees the self loathing in your eyes when he appoints you leader. You don't even know if it's really there or just something you made up to focus on instead of trying to fix what you've broken.

But the damage is done. You can't tear yourself away from the behaviour and habit you've created for yourself but you can damn well try.

So its with that understanding that you begin your efforts to listen even when Donnie shuts you out, to allow Raph to flee the lair to revel in the false freedom you wish he truly had, to let Mikey sleep in every few weeks and turn a blind eye when you spot the water balloon he's fixed above the door to donnie's room.

They welcome you back with open arms and you hate that you aren't punished for the wrongs you've done to them. But they're your brothers and they're just glad to have you back.

You wish you could be satisfied with that.


End file.
